Liat Levanon, The Law of Police Entrapment: Critical Evaluation and Policy Analysis

Laura Burens, Universal Jurisdiction Meets Complementarity: An Approach towards a Desirable Future Codification of Horizontal Complementarity between the Member States of the International Criminal Court

Peter Bridgewater, Rakhyun E. Kim, & Klaus Bosselmann,
Ecological Integrity: A Relevant Concept for International Environmental Law in the Anthropocene?

Markus Vordermayer, ‘Gardening the Great Transformation’: The Anthropocene Concept’s Impact on International Environmental Law Doctrine

Dire Tladi,
The Common Heritage of Mankind and the Proposed Treaty on Biodiversity in Areas beyond National Jurisdiction: The Choice between Pragmatism and Sustainability

Guillaume Futhazar, The Diffusion of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and Its Aichi Biodiversity Targets within the Biodiversity Cluster: An Illustration of Current Trends in the Global Governance of Biodiversity and Ecosystems

Melissa J. Durkee (Univ. of Washington - Law) has posted The Business of Treaties (UCLA Law Review, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Business entities play important and underappreciated roles in the production of international treaties. At the same time, international treaty law is hobbled by state-centric presumptions that render its response to business ad hoc and unprincipled.

This Article makes three principal contributions. First, it draws from case studies to demonstrate the significance of business participation in treaty production. The descriptive account invites a shift from attention to traditional lobbying at the domestic level and private standard-setting at the transnational level to the ways business entities have become autonomous international actors, using a panoply of means to transform their preferred policies into law. Second, the Article analyzes the significance of these descriptive facts, identifying an important set of questions raised by business roles in treaty production. Specifically, business participation could affect the success or failure of treaties along a number of different axes that this Article identifies: participation, process, substance, and compliance. Third, observing that scholars and lawmakers could seize an opportunity to design a theoretically principled legal response to business roles in treaty production, the Article identifies both potential legal structures and reasons why law in this arena could be beneficial. Among other reasons, law could facilitate treaty effectiveness along the dimensions this Article identifies; enhance treaty legitimacy by ensuring that decisionmakers are accountable to the relevant stakeholders; and foster rule of law values such as certainty and procedural stability, which could aid public and private participants alike.

Ultimately, the facts the Article describes present a choice: International law can respond in real time to business roles in treaty production, or it can let those roles evolve as they will, with uncertain and possibly enduring results.

Military deployments in the territory of other States are subject to a diverse range of rules
under international law. In recent years, it has become increasingly common to refer to
these rules as ‘operations law’ or the ‘international law of military operations’.

Despite the growing popularity of the term, its meaning and utility remain uncertain. The
rules of international law governing military operations are complex and multifaceted. Is
the concept of operations law merely a convenient label to describe the many legal
regimes relevant to overseas deployments? Or does its growing use imply that military
operations are governed by common principles forming part of a coherent legal
framework?

The purpose of the conference is to develop our understanding of the international law of
military operations from a comparative and practical perspective. The event will map the
field by exploring the meaning and scope of the concept of operations law. It will also
explore questions of current interest, such as the legal aspects of information operations,
military deployments short of armed conflict, and the impact of human rights law. The
conference will offer a unique opportunity for legal advisors and others working in the
field to debate current legal challenges and to share national experiences and doctrine. To
facilitate this exchange, the conference will set aside time to review training needs and
best practices.

It is with great pleasure that the International Society for Military Law and the Law of
War and Exeter Law School invite subject matter experts to submit their proposals for
presenting a paper at the conference. Proposals addressing the following topics are
particularly welcome:

the concept, meaning and scope of the international law of military operations;

the place of the international law of military operations within the system of public
international law as a potential lex specialis regime;

the relevance and impact of particular branches of public international law—such
as the law of the sea, air law, the law of international responsibility, international
human rights law, the law of State jurisdiction and immunity—on the conduct of
overseas military operations and vice versa;

the legal framework of information and influence operations, both during and
outside of armed conflict;

current legal developments and legal challenges facing the conduct of overseas
military operations, such as the emergence of hybrid threats;

training needs in the area of the international law of military operations and how
best to address them.

Submission and Selection of Papers

Please submit proposals for papers by 8 April 2016 to opslaw-conference@exeter.ac.uk. Proposals should contain the name and contact details of the applicant, the title of the
paper to be presented and an abstract not exceeding 600 words. Applicants should also
attach a brief CV. All papers to be presented should be original work and not have been
published or submitted for publication elsewhere. Proposals and papers must be in
English. Applicants will be informed of the outcome of their submissions by the end of
April 2016.

Publication of Papers

It is expected that the conference proceedings will lead to the publication of an edited
volume with an academic publisher and/or a special issue of a leading law journal.
Acceptance of papers for presentation at the conference does not automatically imply
their selection for publication. Papers selected for publication will be subject to a separate
process of peer review.

Administrative Arrangements

The conference will take place at the Streatham Campus of the University of Exeter. All
conference participants, including speakers, are responsible for making their own travel
arrangements. Accommodation will be arranged for speakers on campus. Further
information and travel directions are available here.

Foreign visitors to the UK may have to apply for a visa at the appropriate Embassy or
Consulate of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Speakers are
responsible for the timely application for their visa.

Partial funding is available to cover the travel expenses of speakers. However, where
possible, the conference organizers kindly invite speakers to cover their own travel
expenses.

Please direct any queries concerning the submission of proposals for papers to opslaw-conference@exeter.ac.uk.

Critics of the international investment treaty regime have claimed that the system of adjudication is biased against developing states. Other scholars, such as Susan Franck, have countered by arguing that any difference in treatment is better explained by the lack of democratic governance in developing states as measured by the Polity IV indicator. This paper probes and tests this new democratic governance hypothesis. First, it replicates Franck’s bivariate/trivariate model with a much larger sample size of cases (n=318 rather than 144) and alternative measures of development. Second, it sets out a disaggregated set of democracy and development hypotheses together with relevant control factors. Third, it runs multivariate models with indicators that correspond to these different hypotheses. The results are otherwise than Franck’s. Development status is a consistently powerful explanation of arbitration outcomes even when controlled for a range of democratic governance variables. The only exception to this pattern is a rule of law indicator. However, we conclude that caution is needed in interpreting these results for both theoretical and empirical reasons.

The international legal system accommodates a range of legal regimes that regulate a number of substantive areas of human behaviour, often accompanied by increasingly detailed institutional and normative frameworks. Within these regimes, international law develops under a range of influences, frequently interacting not only with other areas of international law but also regional or domestic law. This article questions the way in which we examine this process, seeking to clarify the morass of influences that affect it. In rejecting implicitly empirical methods, it stresses the use of causal language as a powerful analytical tool to clarify, in legal terms, what is otherwise a confusing array of competing and interlocking influences. In particular, using the WTO as an example, it posits the development of international law through three interrelated causes: instrumental, systemic and constitutive, that together furnish a holistic explanation of how the law develops in a specific area.

The ability to protect and safeguard cultural heritage is of vital importance to some communities. Without the ability to maintain control over these expressions, external subjects could freely appropriate them, which could negatively affect the community’s identity, spirituality, and general well-being. Increasing awareness regarding cultural heritage provides momentum to better define a legal framework for the protection of the intangible goods that constitute cultural heritage. It is fundamental to ascertain whether the current intellectual property rights (IPR) regime represents an adequate model of protection vis-à-vis intangible cultural heritage (ICH). The culture’s unique concerns, which variably affect ICH, make it difficult to compare the rationales for these two legal domains. These concerns are pivotal in elaborating the need for legal protection. Not only does misuse and misappropriation of ICH cause economic damage, but it also violates the community’s human rights and identity.

Accordingly, a range of issues must be taken into consideration, starting with the desirability of the commodification, or “reification,” which would allow communities to control the commercialization of their ICH through the current IPR regime. To adequately address concerns about commodification, a legal framework must be developed that can guarantee adequate advantages for the countries and communities where the intangible goods originate. This legal framework must, in due time, boost the efforts of these communities to promote a self-sustainable model of economic development and lead them through the inevitable social policy changes that would accompany new ICH protections.

Therefore, our study aims to clarify theoretical and practical legislative tools available to help the actors concerned ascertain how to exploit, trade, and market their own resources and heritage within the global market. Bearing in mind that there are numerous potential legal remedies or amendments to the current legal regime covering the protection of cultural heritage, it is not conceivable to tackle this issue as one uniform hurdle. Each community’s ICH concerns are extremely specific, and, as a result, it may be appropriate to apply ad hoc legal remedies to some, but not all, circumstances involving ICH.

This analysis consists of five Parts. Part I defines fundamental concepts associated with ICH. Part II looks at ICH as a continuous process of social involvement that helps preserve cultural identification. Part III analyzes the current forms of protection available for cultural expression and knowledge. Part IV discusses the shortcomings of adopting a single, all-embracing, umbrella solution and analyzes ways in which the current IPRs can help protect ICH. And finally, Part V proposes ways to modify and improve the current IPRs to protect ICH more efficiently.